It’s been a bit of a twisty day.

This morning, all the work I had shifted from the past few days ganged up on me and demanded that at least some of it be done.

Then, I spent the afternoon at the DMV so my son could get his Learner’s Permit for driving. (Go, Alex!)

So, my first chance to get to my kicking program was as I was putting supper on the BBQ.

I did my stretches and they were marvellous.

Then I tried to do the drills.

First up were some high kicks – leaning really far to one side to get my kick pretty high up.

I did two and that’s when the dizzy spell hit.

It was not even remotely as bad as Tuesday but I stopped right away and went inside to sit down.

Sooooo, now I have some additional information. The dizziness definitely has something to do with the position of my head.

And I’ll be avoiding that leaning-head-down position until some medical professionals figure things out.

That means that getting my kicks higher is no longer a viable goal.

My new focus is on better kicks. For me, that means kicks with power that come from having good mobility in my hips.

This is even more of a ‘how it feels’ measurement than before, but I can handle that.

PS – There is no need to tell me that I got back to things too soon. I didn’t. I followed the doctor’s instructions and then stopped when I encountered an issue.

So many of my friends have been gleefully sharing the “good news for fast walkers” story that’s been making the rounds. Often they do so with a comment like “I might live to 120.”

Go you! And the thing is a few years ago, before my knee gave up on me I might have done the same.

One notable thing about the study is that speedy walking pace predicted a long life even for people who are significantly overweight. Walking speed was a better predictor of life length than weight.

Martha blogged about the study here.

As a former fast walker, now slow and cautious walker, I’m wondering what my pace means. Early death?

Not really.

As one commentator put it, “The study concludes that the brisk walkers were already more fit to begin with, which is why they have a greater life expectancy. (In other news, water is wet.)”

Basically walking speed is a proxy for physical fitness and physical fitness predicts a long life. I had another group of friends who shared the story on social media with an aspirational slogan like “time to pick up the pace.”

The thing is mere fast walking won’t do it. But fast walking that makes you fitter will. You can also get fit in other ways, swimming and biking for instance. Fast wheeling, if you’re using a wheelchair for getting around, will do it too.

Don’t glorify fast walking for fast walking’s sake. And please don’t plow down me and the other cautious plodders. We’re walking too even if we’re not speedy about it. No slow shaming please.

As Sam has posted, a bunch of us went on a bike trip in Newfoundland last week.  It was an awe-inspiring trip in many ways.  First, the place is just stunning — it’s pretty in that “this is almost too lovely and quaint and inviting to be true” kind of way:

But it’s also stunning in a primal, earth-at-its-essence kind of way.

More than all of that, I remain awed that we actually rode what we rode.

Newfoundland is a place of grit, the first place Europeans are known to have landed in North America (Norse people nearly 500 years before Columbus), a place that has been home to countless generations of indigenous people (gone now for the most part because of settler genocide), a place of people who have made life and culture out of fishing and the sea, and who have weathered poverty, the collapse of the cod fishery, an unforgiving climate and remain notoriously generous, welcoming, kind.

It only makes sense that riding in Newfoundland requires a pretty significant helping of grit.  Our total trip, from Deer Lake to L’Anse aux Meadows (the viking settlement), was more than 600 km — 600 hilly, cold, wet, windy, insect-ful kilometres.

I’m a pretty strong rider, and I have this fancy new adventure bike (which I love — more about this later!), and I’m known for my persistence.  And I found some of these rides unbelievably hard.  And when you are climbing more than 1300 m over a 92 km day, or riding 87 km in an average temperature of 3 degrees C, mostly soaking wet and freezing, or engaged in a primal, solo battle with trickster, murderous cross-winds — on these rides, you do have to wonder — why do this?

This question was a frequent topic on the road for me and Susan.  It wasn’t the kind of riding where it was easy to ride side by side chatting, most of the time, but we did have a running dialogue about “why are we doing this, exactly?”  

There are certainly some facile answers to this question — I wanted to be with people I love and enjoy, I wanted to see a part of the country I’ve always been drawn to, I wanted to see L’anse aux meadows, which has captured my imagination since I was 10, I like an active holiday.  But there are bike trips and there are Bike Trips.  There is riding gently on the Tuscan coast and staying in crumbling, sun-kissed inns, and there is riding through rain and cold and swarms of midges and mosquitoes, eating a sandwich in a ditch, battling with wearying wind, and then cooking your own food and sleeping in a tent. This is not for everyone.

On many of the hours on this trip, I went into my sort of head-down, high efficiency, total flow-focus that marks my particular brand of grit.  (The thing that, in a past version of me, made me an excellent marathoner).  I can pedal past the “this is uncomfortable, wow there are icy rivers in my shoes, is this what hypoTHERMIA feels like, OMG these effing black flies, this wind is going to throw me in the ditch and no one will ever find my body” internal dialogue and just dip into the essential part of me, where physical and emotional strength meet and thought becomes secondary.  I can tap into the part of me that is animal, just engaged with moving, the outside world, the potential inside me.

This is the flow that evokes the wisdom our guide repeated many times when I climbed Kilimanjaro 10 years ago:  “The mountain is the mountain.  Today is today.”

There aren’t many places — or ways of moving through places — that summon up that sense of absolute presence.  And I need it.

I keep thinking that this kind of grit-pushing effort comes down to knowing why you are riding your own road. And conversely, riding this hard road can teach you what that meaning is. Fighting with wind, fighting fatigue, finding your untapped grit, hours on the bike — it clarifies things.

For me, it clarifies how important it is for me to get in flow with that grit-version of me.  I don’t need to live there all the time — after the wettest, coldest day, Susan and I took a day off and got a ride to the next town and a tour of the area and all its history and tragedies with Steve’s dad Bill.  That was good.  And I was ready to get back on the bike the next day for our longest day.

Grit.  Not good in your shoes, but good in your soul.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede, who lives and rides in Toronto.  This is a picture of her on a nice little hike on a day off riding on this trip — look how serene she looks.  She likes to count things, and this is her 100th post for this blog.

Many of us here at Fit Is a Feminist Issue are Serena Williams fans. We have watched her be body policed (see Catherine’s post on athleticism and beauty), clothing policed (see Mina’s post on the catsuit), and just generally treated with disrespect (see Catherine’s post about the infamous 2018 US Open).

In an oddly titled article — “Serena Williams poses unretouched for Harper’s BAZAAR” –Serena Williams offers a candid personal essay about her love of tennis, her success as a champion, and the challenges she has faced in tennis as a woman and an African American woman.

Serena Williams has been known to lose her cool on occasion on the court. She has taken umpires to task, thrown down her racket, been penalized for standing up for herself over a penalty she didn’t think she deserved. She has also dominated the game for 20 years already, more than holding her own in a sport in which she looks different from the majority of other competitors. She is a strong and muscular, for one thing. She is African American for another.

Last September she lost the US Open to Naomi Osaka. The loss came after a series of penalties against Serena Williams, including being docked a game for her outburst over previous penalties. In the Harper’s Bazaar essay, Serena admits that Naomi played the better game and that her own (Serena’s) behaviour detracted from Naomi’s moment as the US Open Champion and first Japanese player ever to win a Grand Slam. Serena writes that she knew she owed Naomi an apology, and sent said apology with further congratulations.

Naomi Osaka received the apology with grace and reassurance, so much so that it brought Serena Williams to tears. Osaka said: “People can misunderstand anger for strength because they can’t differentiate between the two. No one has stood up for themselves the way you have and you need to continue trailblazing’.”

Last week I wrote about Venus Williams in relation to role modeling and mentoring of the next generation of athletes. Serena Williams is similarly an idol of many up and coming young tennis players, and an icon in the sport. Her essay in Harper’s shows a degree of self-awareness, social and political awareness, humanity, self-confidence, humility, and concern for the next generation — “the next girl who comes along and looks like me, and I hope, ‘Maybe, just maybe, my voice will help her.”

In so many ways it’s precisely because of the hardship and challenges that Serena has experienced that she has been forced to “represent” and to see herself as a role model for “the next girl who comes along and looks like” her.

Men in tennis don’t have to see themselves in this manner because they are not scrutinized in the manner that Serena has been. She stands out when she stands up for herself because it’s not comfortable for women to do that. It’s not comfortable for African American women to claim their space and their voice the way Serena has. This is not to say none has done it before. But she has a particular position as a long reigning champion that has put her in a role that, though not chosen, she must embrace. As Naomi Osaka pointed out to her, Serena is a trailblazer. Blazing the trail isn’t easy, but it’s welcome, commendable, and heroic.